Review of Designing Multi-Device Experiences | By Michal Levin

OK so it's been a while since my last review, and I've finally picked up a copy of Training Guide: Programming in HTML5 with Javascript and CSS3 | Glenn Johnson. The book from the onset was focused on using Microsoft technologies and tools, to illustrate platform-neutral concepts, which was an issue for me, honestly. The book itself is very well structured, but it's primary aim is to build windows 8-focused windows applications. With that caveat in mind, if the book still fits your workflow and plans, continue reading... The book kicks-off by introducing you to the tools of the trade for learning to program on the Microsoft platform, Visual Studio, with some hints on moulding a workable environment for you to get set-up. The following chapters introduce basic HTML5 concepts, which works for me regardless of whether I program on a Mac or Windows, and then some javascript concepts and then in chapter 4, we get to some CSS3. The later was quite a useful chapter for me, as it brought out a lot of concepts I hadn't used before, since CSS3 wasn't something I focused on as I am not a seasoned Web Designer.

Chapter 5 and 6 begin to dive deeper into more advanced HTML5 and Javascript/JQuery, going into new markups that the author wants to have covered, before Chapter 7 builds on top of that, with forms, using javascript/JQuery. Chapter 8 was one of my favourite chapters, as it went into web services, using Node.JS and REST, and I do plan on reading a dedicated NodeJS book hopefully soon, this chapter certain whet my appetite.

The two chapters following discussed Ajax and general asynchronous logic more, such as working with web sockets. The remaining chapters, from 11 onwards went back to discussing HTML5 concepts, from location-awareness, drawing, drag-and-drop, local data storage and finally working with offline applications.

The book in total touches on a lot of concepts, and whilst this book will not make you an expert in either one topic, it provides a strong general overview. It is focused on beginners to web development, and whilst I would have liked this book to be more platform-agnostic, especially since it used very heavily community-pushed technologies like NodeJS, I appreciated the strength of the content of this book, the fact it kept concepts in context, in order for you to understand the relevance of such technologies. A compelling book, and for aspiring web developers, this book puts you in the right direction.

Concise: 5

Level: 4

Prior Knowledge: For aspiring web developers. A bit of .NET knowledge is required for one chapter, but you can pick the chapters that suit your aspirations and skillset.